Plank In Print: Sam Korman
Photo: Changsu. Skater: Kento Yoshioka.
Print is dead. The internet killed the magazine.
It’s the sentiment that has been said over and over, and as magazines seem to drop dead quicker than the next issue can be released, it feels real. Thankfully there are a few people rebelling to keep print alive. Sam Korman is one of those people, doing the unthinkable. Earlier in the month, Sam announced the release of the first issue of Plank a biannual skateboarding, art, and literary magazine that wants to show skateboarding’s interconnectedness to the wider cultural conversations that flank it, and that it informs. Plank is a magazine for the nerds, the obsessed ones, the ones probably like you and I reading this, who feel like skateboarding was our gateway into a creative world beyond just skating, and the ones who are yet to be led to the gate.
The ‘night’ themed first issue features what seems to me to be the best issue of a skate magazine in a long time. A career-spanning profile on Heath Kirchart, a poem by Olly Todd, a photo series by Matt Price, Spencer Gillespie of Village Psychic’s top five skate videos to fall asleep to, sleep secrets from twenty pros, and so much more. The magazine is fun and serious all at the same time. A breath of fresh air that we have been gasping for.
As Sam says in this interview, ‘a magazine is more than just a publication, it can build community around it.’ It’s the parties, the events, the contributors, and the conversations it can start. There is a need for print publications and as a big fan of skateboarding, Sam, what he is doing and what he is doing, I admire him and want to say thank you for taking that step toward doing the unthinkable. Long live print.
If you want to support the Plank you will be able to buy it at plankskatemag.com and at a hundred skate shops across The States or if you are in New York, at their launch on September 6th at Montez Press Radio, just above Labor on Canal Street on the Lower East Side.
photo: Changsu. Skater: Tomahiro Ueno.
Okay, it’s 2024 and you’ve done the unthinkable. Started a print publication. What made you want to do it?
Yeah, as I’m having a child [laughs]. I have two babies. It’s been insane but my whole life has been insane and upturned in the last year anyway, so it is hard to differentiate what have been the most insane parts. I sold my first ad the day my wife’s water broke. I got a call from her and was like ‘Oh my god, I just sold an ad to Jerry Hsu, Sci-Fi Fantasy just bought an ad!’ and she was like ‘I am at the Japanese grocery store, and I think my water just broke’ [laughs]. I’ve had the idea for a really long time, but I put the idea into action last fall, one of my friends signed up to do the design and it felt like this is the time to do it. My wife has been super encouraging so it was like, I have enough pieces in place, I’m going to see how much I can do it.
Man, that is crazy [laughs]. The birth of both babies at the same time. How long have you been working on the magazine for?
I think I wrote the first invitations to contributors, in November, and it has trickled in since then. For half of it I was deliriously DMing people at four in the morning as I was nursing my daughter to sleep.
It’s so sick that you got the Sci-Fi ad first.
He wrote me back right away. Getting an email from Jerry Hsu, is already crazy enough, I am such a fan and then he writes back really quickly with an encouraging response, it was crazy. I was just like I have got to do this thing so I can run this ad.
Literally. Plank is a skate, art, and literary magazine was it a conscious decision to have it all together and not just be a traditional skate magazine?
Yeah, that was a very conscious decision. Skateboarding has always been my gateway to so many interesting things, music, fashion and on some level art and literature too. This is a little bit annoying, but I remember reading this Ethan Fowler interview in Transworld and he was talking about reading Dostoevsky, I was like 15-years-old and that was pretty impactful. I’ve always thought those things have been really connected, skating has always been my lens into all of those things. In art school learning about, Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson and the non-site, that’s skate spots, but feeling like I have to be like a serious person now and no one here in art school wants to hear my skater talk. But then also feeling self-conscious that none of the skaters want to hear my art talk. Now, I’m 37 and I’ve made a bunch of other friends who love skating, music, art, and literature. I live in a cool part of town, right by Dimes Square. Labor is in the middle of this weird cultural meet and skaters are all a part of this scene. It’s all there, there just isn’t a skate media outlet that ties it all together.
For sure, I can really relate to that too. Skateboarding was that gateway for me to get into music, photography, and art, so bringing them all together is so nice.
What’s nice is they don’t necessarily fit neatly together; they complement one and other but there is a bit of friction between them which I think creates a really nice tension. The tagline or the joke I’ve made all along is, ‘Everyone has dated a skater’ [laughs]. Everyone has an immediate connection to this world and in some way finds it interesting, compelling, hot, and maybe when they’re at their skater partner's house and pick up a skate magazine, they are intrigued and think what’s this short story about.
Photos: Christian Kerr. Text: Ian Browning
It's refreshing having a magazine that truely highlights different things, that still may relate to skateboarding like having what Erik Ellington talk about what he does before he goes to sleep or Olly Todd’s poems but aren’t the same stories told continuously in skate media.
Yeah, and trying to get out of that macho thing too and open it up to more sensitive and artistically inclined people.
How many issues are you planning on doing a year?
I’m planning on releasing it every six months. I would ideally want to do a few more, but I simply don’t have the time or infrastructure. I was just looking at the book Polar released to accompany their new video in Japan and Pontus [Alv] writes that he really wanted to work on something slowly and deliberately. I think they took seven years to make that video and it shows. It is stunning. It is nice to work at a slower pace and kind of let the themes and content accumulate.
Speaking on the themes this issue is night themed, are you wanting to give every issue a theme?
Yeah, I think it is a nice way to have a little bit of structure to it but still keep it open ended. I don’t want to be too prescriptive about it. Most of the time when I approach a writer, I just say, ‘Hey, I like what you do here is the theme, are there any ideas this brings to mind?’ I love working with a writer, photographer, or artist on developing something that would work for it. Working with people I admire and trust and giving them as much leeway to do something they want to try out. I think the themes help me to do that. At the same time, I am thinking of the magazine in terms of volume’s so there will be three issues a volume and there will be two that are thematic and there will be one that is miscellaneous, which is kind of all the things I have wanted to publish but haven’t worked for the themes.
How did you come up with the theme of ‘night’ for the first issue?
I mean I think that part of it was about the dreaminess that night skating has and the industry that it produces, I feel like it lets me talk to some of the more mythological or myth making parts of skate culture. It is very impressionistic. I really like what Mark Leckey says in his interview of the magazine where he says it is just a cheaper way to make things more cinematic. Moving forward I want to have interestingly directed skate editorials but when you lack a budget you just use a flash and suddenly you look like you’re in a new wave movie.
Is the night theme why you did the Heath Kirchart profile for this issue?
Yeah, he was the first person who came to mind.
Still: Sight Unseen. Text: Spencer Gillespie
How was working on that?
Honestly, I was so intimidated. I mean for the last four years I have been writing about skateboarding for my blog and I have never really spoke to the skaters that I wrote about, I just looked at other interviews and wrote about their video parts and that kind of stuff. Then originally, I was like this will be the last one where I don’t actually talk to the skater. I also didn’t think I would have access to him, he doesn’t have social media, he is notoriously reclusive, he didn’t give an interview until like 2005. So, I didn’t think I could. I wrote the whole thing and then there was these accusations that James Hardy made on The Bunt before he passed away about Heath hazing. My friend Max Harrison- Caldwell who is now the Associate Editor of the magazine, just graduated from Berkeley School of Journalism and was like you need to track him down, you need a statement. Then through friends of friends I was able to get his email and he responded immediately. He was incredibly generous, we spoke for three hours, he was super open, there were tough subjects we had to talk about, and he was open to talk about it all. Even when I was starting to feel uncomfortable, he was like this is the past, I’m not ashamed of my past you can ask me whatever I want. There is something really admirable about that. But it was also one of the craziest and most intimidating things I’ve done as a writer.
I couldn’t even imagine how intimidating that would’ve been [laughs]. Pretty much all art, literary and fashion magazines have themed issues but is this the first themed skateboarding magazine?
Big Brother used to do it all the time and a lot of them would be pretty crass but that was Big Brother. They are one of the main inspirations for this magazine. Slap would do it sometimes, but they were one of the only magazines that would consistently publish written editorial skate content. It was pretty outlandish but sometimes it had this beautiful savant genius to it. What I admire too that I miss from contemporary skateboarding is they were really creative with how they were doing staging. Spike Jonze shooting Rick Howard for the cover at a skatepark where everything is painted Pepto Bismol pink, and he is wearing all pink and everything is pink on the cover. I miss that kind of creativity and art direction of prior skate history. The skits and all of the set pieces.
Even though Big Brother didn’t take itself too seriously, there is something to take from what they were doing.
Yeah, totally. I haven’t quite landed on the language to describe it, but I really want to present a strong editorial vision like Big Brother had.
Was Big Brother where the inspiration for articles like tips to sleep from 20 pro skaters came from?
It’s like you can’t have a skate magazine that takes itself too seriously. I love the humour and the irony that has always been a part of skate culture and I thought that would be a funny way to tie those two things in.
Photo Dave Swift. Text: Sam Korman.
We both are obviously huge fans of print media, how important is it to keep the print media landscape alive?
What’s important about it is two things, you can really build a community around a magazine which is something that I have watched happen in New York over the last ten years. There have been all these pretty quick and dirty literary magazines that build up a scene and put out a set of ideas and propping up the careers of a lot of really talented people. That has been amazing to watch with some amount of envy. They also throw great parties even if they are a little bit scary on some level. The other thing is I was once a 17-year-old kid who would go hang out at the skate shop and flip through magazines to kill an afternoon. Hopefully there is some 17-year-old kid who is doing the same thing and picks up this and is like ‘What’s the deal with this? Oh, this is interesting’.
Publications can do so much. It is more than what a website or a web article could ever do and that is so nice.
A big part of this magazine is that hopefully it could be a keepsake. Hopefully it has a little bit of a more enduring quality to it, both materially and in terms of writing and imagery.
If you had any advice for anyone wanting to start a print publication but is too scared, what would that be?
Don’t think about it too much about the future. Just try to get the first one out.
Did you have anything else you wanted to say about the magazine?
I just want to thank my wife in a big way for all her support. I’ve tried to get so many magazines or publications off the ground over the last 15 years and there have been so many half starts, false starts or misdirection so it is nice to be taking it to the next level. I love magazines and I just want to run a magazine.
Photo of Sam: Ted Schmitz